


Sh*t My Dad Says

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU, DCU Animated
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-18
Updated: 2013-04-18
Packaged: 2017-12-08 21:01:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/765968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dick has an emotional problem and asks Bruce for advice. Because obviously, if you need help with your feelings, you go to Batman. </p><p>Many thanks to amanuensis for beta duty!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sh*t My Dad Says

"Master Richard, your face." The reproach in the old man's voice was overlaid with concern, and Dick winced, turning his face away. He had forgotten Alfred would be worried, had forgotten to keep his face and its lurid blossom of bruise out of the light if he wanted to avoid Alfred's mother-henning. Still, made a nice change from Bruce, whose reproach would be overlaid with reproach. 

"It's fine, Alfred. It's just a scrape. I landed a little hard the other night, is all. Decided to tuck when I shoulda rolled."

"You should let me put something on that, sir. It looks like it was very ill-tended. Might I take the liberty of preparing a solution for you to bathe it in?"

Dick allowed himself a reluctant smile. He had forgotten this, too, in the last year at Bludhaven; forgotten what it felt like to be looked after, forgotten the softness of the carpet under his feet, forgotten how Alfred's smallest request for liberty prompted urgent obedience. "Sure, that'd be great. Thanks, Alfred. Is he in?"

"Master Bruce is below, yes sir. Shall I notify him of your arrival?"

"Nah, that's okay. I'll just head on down, if that's all right."

"Of course, sir. Shall I prepare your room for the night, then?" 

It was a question mark that was anything but, and Dick hesitated; he had planned on heading straight back to Bludhaven, but that felt rude now, and like it would disappoint Alfred somehow, and since he was nine he had pretty much made a religion out of never disappointing Alfred, so he gave another lopsided grin and a "Sure, why not," and headed to the secret entrance. 

"Welcome, Nightwing," purred the retinal scanner behind the bookcase as he bent to peer at the collected works of Poe. The raven's eye on the spine glowed red at him. The walls slid apart, and he trotted down the narrow stone defile, the lights flicking on ahead of him, and then off behind him. He paused at the final turn before a blank stone wall, and let the body scanners do their work. The stone slid open a crack, and he slipped inside. 

The bank of monitors glowed crystalline blue in the darkness of the cave, planing the face of the man sitting in front of them, shadowing its too-sharp angles. Dick plopped into the chair beside him. 

"Your face looks like that because you were lazy." Not that he had turned to look, or glanced up from his keyboard.

"Actually, my face looks like this because sometimes there are more bad guys than good guys. I don't guess there's any chance you've got a beer in the fridge down here?"

"I don't guess there's any chance you're two years older than you were last month? And numbers are irrelevant. You forgot your training." A few more keystrokes, and the monitors blinked, crackled: some sort of test he was running, on a substance he was micrographing. Dick propped his feet up and stretched his hands behind his head. 

"You know," he mused, "I feel sure I've pointed this out before, but when I was born, Haley's Circus was on a European tour. I was actually born somewhere on the border between Switzerland and France — both places which, and correct me if I'm wrong, have a legal drinking age of sixteen, which by my calculations I passed three years ago. I could have a Swiss passport if I wanted, I bet. That's bound to be good for a beer or two."

Bruce squinted at the screen on the left, frowning. "Interesting," he said. He was wearing the suit, but not the cowl, which meant he had been on patrol earlier tonight and hadn't yet bothered to change. When Dick had been young, he had always found it unsettling, to see him like that — suited, but with his face exposed. Weirdly vulnerable, somehow. Bruce, but not Bruce. 

Once, when he was little — and he couldn't have been more than ten, it had to have been the first year he was living at Wayne Manor — he had woken screaming from a nightmare. They were all the same, in those days, all the nightmares: somehow it was not his father, or his mother, swinging through the wind-whistle of terror and empty air, but him. He was the one falling, and falling, and falling. Endlessly falling, in all his dreams, and he would open his mouth for the scream but the rush of air would suck it away, and up there, on the platform, his mother was laughing and calling to his aunt, and they were swinging joyfully out of reach, forever out of reach, and there was nothing to stop the sick crunch of his fall. He woke hearing two things: the sound of his own hoarse screams, and the sound of heavy boots outside his room, running. And then he was being held, cradled, in stiff black Kevlar that was the solidest thing in the world, and the safest. He had cried onto that shoulder until it was slick, until he could see the sheen of his tears on it in the dark. Gloved hands had cradled his head. And above the black of the armor had been Bruce's bare face. 

_If you had been wearing your suit that night, could you have saved them?_

And Bruce's face, a spasm of something across it. _I don't know. I wish I had been. I don't know._

What an unthinkingly cruel question, and only a child's brutality could have asked it. If you had been Batman instead of Bruce Wayne that night, could you have saved my parents? And if the answer had been yes. . . what then? Would he have said: then never ever be Bruce Wayne again, only be Batman, always and forever? Because every time you are just Bruce, someone else will die, and it will always, always be your fault. So erase, erase, get erased. 

"Did you come all the way from Bludhaven just to sit there and brood? This cave only has room for one dark and moody, you'll have to get your own." 

"Sorry." Dick landed his feet with a thud. "Actually. . . there was something I wanted to talk to you about. I need some. . . advice."

That got him a glance up from the keyboard. "Advice," he said. 

"Yeah. I know. I realize I'm not big in the asking for help department. But — I wouldn't ask if it weren't important."

Bruce studied him thoughtfully. "Who are you up against?"

Dick barked a laugh. "Well. It's not quite like that. I mean, I guess you could put it that way. I was actually wondering — see, I need some help with. . . feelings."

Bruce looked at him like he had begun to ooze blood from his eyesockets. "So you came here."

"Yeah, I know, right? I must really be fucked." He ran his hands through his hair. It made him look even more of a mess. Alfred would fuss. "See, the thing is. . . I need to know how you do it. I mean, not you specifically. Well, actually, yeah, _you_ specifically. It's just, this team leader thing. . . I'm screwing it up, is what."

"Screwing it up." Bruce had a way of repeating your words like he had never heard them before, like you were inventing language and you were doing a piss-poor job of it. Dick sighed.

"Yeah, screwing it to hell, in fact. I have. . ." He chewed his lip, bit it savagely. He was weak, weak, weak. "Feelings. I have feelings, and I. . . I don't know how to get rid of them. They're standing in the way of — I can't be a team leader and feel this way. I can't do it. Jesus, Bruce, tell me what to do here."

"I don't suppose one of those brochures on puberty would help?"

Dick stood, kicked his chair until it spun. "Now he develops a sense of humor. Very funny. How about some actual help?"

"As soon as you begin using English. You haven't spoken a complete sentence in fifteen minutes. Mind telling me what the hell you're talking about?"

Dick leaned against a sleek black cabinet, buried his head in his arms. Probably whatever equipment it housed was worth more than the Batmobile. He wanted to kick it. Weak, weak, stupid weak. "I'm in love with a team member," he said. He raised his head to find Bruce just looking at him. "Did you hear me?"

"Yes."

He plopped back down in his chair, idly spinning back and forth. "It's not working," he said, after a while. "I've tried everything I know to make it go away. I gave into it for a while, but that was a mistake. I tried to bury it, ignore it, and that was a mistake. Everything I do, it just—it leaks out at the edges, no matter what I do. It's—" he could taste the humiliation in the back of his throat, flat and ironlike. "It's clouding my judgment. It's affecting how I deal with the team. I'm no kind of leader, I'm not the leader they need. I can't even control my own emotions. I've failed, and the sooner I admit it, the better."

The silence stretched for a long while, and when he finally looked, Bruce's face was unreadable. "Who," he said.

"Barbara," Dick said quietly, swallowing all the shame of it. Barbara who did not want him, Barbara who could not. Barbara who was supposed to be like a sister. Bruce was studying his glove as through something fascinating had alighted on it.

"Tell me how you do it," Dick said. "Please, please tell me."

"Tell you how I do what?"

"You've led the Justice League for years. There isn't anything you don't know about how to lead a team. You live and breathe this, you _are_ your team. I want that. Teach me how to lead like that. I mean." He stood again, paced. He clenched and unclenched his fists, wanting to hit something, grab something, clutch at his hair if only he were ten years younger. "I thought I knew everything I needed to know about leading a team, but I was wrong. I couldn't have been more wrong. I have no self-control, no—"

"You're nineteen years old. You're being unreasonable in your expectations of yourself."

"No." Dick rounded on him. "No. You weren't. You were nineteen, and you did it."

A twitch at the corner of Bruce's brow. "I did what, exactly?"

"You know what I mean. Yeah, I get it, I'm a nineteen-year-old guy, I'm genetically programmed to think about sex all the time. But that can be overcome. I know it can. You did it. You can teach me. Please." His body was a tightwire, strung taut. "Please, teach me how you did it. And not just the sex. All of it. Show me how you got rid of all of it, how you purged it. I need you to fucking _show_ me."

Bruce was still staring at him. Bruce blinked: once, twice. "You think," he said, and stopped. He wasn't sure if he had ever heard Bruce pause in the middle of a sentence before. "Let me see if I understand. You want me to help you stop feeling," he said.

Dick shook his head. "No, that's not what I meant. Fuck it, I'm saying this all wrong. I know you feel, I didn't mean to make it sound like that. Love, okay? Love, is what I'm talking about. A leader can feel plenty, but not that. That's what will cloud your judgment, every time. That's what I can't afford to have happen. I can't afford to feel love. So, please." He collapsed back in his chair again, wrung. "Just. Please. Tell me what to do here." 

Bruce was taking off his gloves, and now he was examining each of them in turn. "You want me to tell you how to live without love."

"Yes. That is what I want. That thing. Yes."

Bruce rested his forehead on the tips of his fingers, and flickered his eyes shut, just for an instant: an infinitely weary gesture, and one Dick had never seen from him before. "Well," he said at last. "I couldn't have done worse on a bet, could I?"

"What do you mean?"

"Dick. I don't."

"Don't what?" He was leaning forward, eager. Any minute now, he knew, Bruce would tell him the secret. Was it more meditation? Was there some key to his workouts that could suppress that part of him, that could work to dampen animal desires? He wouldn't walk away from here without knowing, he wouldn't accept his own failure without a fight.

"I don't live without love." Bruce was enunciating very carefully. 

"Oh." Dick sat back. "Well, yeah, that. I mean, I know you get laid. I mean, I'm not sitting here asking how to be a monk, I fully intend to fuck around and I know you do too, though being a multi-billionaire has got to make that part a little easier. It's the other part I'm just not. . . that I can't. . . " He shut his eyes, his clarity of a moment ago slipping away from him. What would it feel like, to be rid of this ache in his chest? Some days he wanted to claw his chest open to be rid of it.

"I don't," Bruce was saying, in the same careful voice, "live without love."

Dick tipped his head back and groaned. "I think we are in two different conversations."

"No, we're not. You're just refusing to understand me."

"And you're refusing to understand that getting sucked off by the Waynette of the week is not the same thing as love, all right? I mean, fine, maybe this is something you're not equipped to understand, but I'm talking about love, actual love. The sort of thing where you would die for someone, where you would throw your body in front of a thermonuclear explosion if it would keep them safe, the sort of thing where they're all you can think about — love, all right? Where you share all of yourself with someone, not just part, someone who knows Nightwing and Dick Grayson and all of that. Love like the thing that gets in your veins and won't ever get out, love as in poetry and romance and Romeo and Juliet, got it?"

"I think I can grasp the concept. As well as someone who's not equipped to understand can."

"Okay, sorry, I'm just frustrated, can you understand that? And I know what you're going to say. Jesus, I could practically write the script here. Dick, you're getting all worked up over nothing. Dick, go do what nineteen-year-olds do and get it out of your system. Dick, go find some meaningless—"

"Is there any chance you're going to shut up anytime soon?"

Dick subsided at that particular tone of voice. It wasn't angry, exactly, but it was the voice that said, _I could be angry, if anger were something I allowed myself._ He twiddled a few knobs on the panel in front of him. "Sorry," he said, aware he sounded petulant and approximately eleven. 

"That's better. Now stop assuming you know what I'm going to say. Think you can listen for about two minutes?"

Dick gave a half-hearted nod. Somewhere on the other side of the door to the cave was his adulthood, where he didn't kick chairs and rant and storm like a sullen teenager. He wondered if being around Bruce made everyone feel this way. "I'm listening," he sighed.

"Good. Because I want to be very clear. You need to follow this feeling you have."

"Follow it."

"Yes. You need to let yourself feel it, and you need to follow it where it goes. You need to be around Barbara as much as possible. You need to let her know how you feel."

"Oh. Okay, that's great. That's really awesome advice there, Dr. Love. I'm just wondering how this conversation would go. Babs, great work back there, and by the way I jack off every night thinking about the sound of your voice and what it would sound like moaning my name while I—"

"Too much information. And I said let her know, not necessarily in words. In my experience, words are over-rated."

"In your experience," Dick said skeptically. 

"Listen up, smart-ass. You're one hell of a team leader, and the work you've done with the covert league in this past year has been. . . more than adequate."

"Oh. That's—"

"Shut up. I'm trying to say, you have a gift for this. But if this is really what you want to do, if being a leader is really what you want, then there's something you're going to need. You're going to need a partner."

"I already have—"

"I'll let you know when you can talk. For now, you listen. You can't be a leader without a partner, someone who knows every inch of you. I don't mean someone who works with you on a daily basis; I mean someone who knows you inside and out. Someone who knows all your bullshit and can call you on it when you're out of line. Someone who can tell you the truth you don't want to hear. Someone who can pick you up off the floor when you're too tired and heartsick to move, someone whose judgment you trust more than your own. Someone who can remind you who you are when all you want to do is forget, and who loves you when everything else is stripped away from you. And if you think there is even the remotest possibility that Barbara Gordon might be that person, then you go after her, and you let nothing— do you hear me, nothing— stand in your way. Not your own fears, not your own uncertainties, nothing. You let her know how you feel, and you move heaven and earth to be with her, and if by some miracle of God she loves you back, then you tell her every single day you are lucky enough to be on the face of this earth how much you love her, and how much you need her, and you tell her she is the heart in your body and the blood in your veins and the air in your lungs, and you never, never forget what it is that keeps you on your feet and out that door to do battle every single goddamn day of your life. Never." 

Bruce rose, tossing his gloves onto the console behind him. Dick sat frozen. "That's. . . but I. . ." He licked his lips. "You. . ."

"Very eloquent. You want to try for a sentence?"

Dick found his tongue and his adulthood. "You think I need to have something you never did," he said, not flinching from Bruce's eyes. 

"I did have that. I do have it. You just never saw it, and that was my fault. I'm sorry for that."

Dick tried to absorb this, but somehow _Bruce just apologized_ paled next to _Bruce has a lover_. His brain was flipping quickly through the pictures like a cartoon game on the corner of a notebook: Bruce in someone's arms, Bruce being tender, Bruce having sex—nope, stopping right there. His mind ran like lightning through the possibilities, but there were only so many. "Someone in the League," he said. "When you said someone who knows all of you, you didn't just mean that it's okay for it to be a team member. You mean it _has_ to be a team member, right? So that means that you—"

"This is not a slumber party," Bruce said. He was unhooking his belt, loosening the side clips of his armor. "Sharing time is over."

"Okay, but one question, just one I swear. How long, can you tell me that? Just that much?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes. "I'm going to take a shower, and I'll be upstairs in a bit. Go let Alfred doctor your face, you really do look like hell."

"Okay. Okay, I'm just gonna say names here, and you can either nod or—"

"Dick. Go." It was not a tone to be ignored, so Dick sighed and hauled his long body out of the chair. 

"Fine, fine," he grumbled. "But on my way down I happen to have smelled some of Alfred's tomato basil soup in the kitchen, and if you don't hurry up I am going to shamelessly eat all of it, which Alfred will let me do because I'm injured." He flashed a rakish grin. "You know Alfred's rules, the injured guy gets thirds." He practically skipped out the sliding rock door and ricocheted up the staircase. His chest felt light, like he too had been wearing heavy armor he had just slipped off. 

He thought of Barbara, and felt lighter still. That dam wall he had constructed, that tight box he had locked everything in—he felt it crack, felt the joy and pain and want start to flow out. He could do this. One way or the other, he would know. He would stop avoiding her eyes, stop looking in the other direction when she spoke, stop coming up with reasons to avoid her. And maybe. . . maybe he could think of something to say to her, something that would let her know. . .

He wasn't worried about it. He would find the right thing to say. Words had never been a problem for him, and it was only Bruce who made him feel tongue-tied. That had been some pretty good material back there, and Bruce would never be the wiser if he used some of it. _Heart in my body, blood in my veins, air in my lungs_. . . good stuff, that. Definitely useable.

He paused at the final stair before the library entrance, still thinking. It was just. . . there weren't that many people it could be, was the thing. Definitely not Dinah, she was joined at the hip (and other parts) to Oliver. Shayera? But Shayera and John were on and off again, mostly on, and he had never noticed Bruce even having a conversation with her that didn't involve a mission of some sort. Zatanna? Okay, too weird. She was about half Bruce's age, and his own ex besides, and he was pretty sure that Bruce was talking about a relationship that had been going on for some time. 

Diana? Diana would be the obvious choice, but he remembered a conversation he had gotten into with her, a while back, about Tim and Cassie—she had not been very approving, which had kind of surprised him, since Tim was about the most upstanding guy he knew, and who could have any objections to Tim? And Diana had said something about how that was fine for Cassie, since she wasn't actually an Amazonian, but that Amazonians didn't mate "in that way." _Oh yeah, so how exactly do they mate?_ he had said, or something smooth and obnoxious to that effect, but she had as usual ignored his innuendo and said something about how Amazons didn't take life partners. At the time he had been too boggled by the thought of Diana taking casual partners to bed and then discarding them, and wondering how he could manage to be one of them, to pay much attention to what that meant. So. . . not her, apparently. And that was it, that was all the female members of the Justice League, and yeah, Dinah definitely had a point about how that male-to-female ratio sucked. 

Something about the puzzle wasn't right: he was miscalculating something, not seeing something obvious. Never mind. It would come to him, just like the right words to say to Barbara. And in the meantime, he would sniff around Clark. Clark would know, for sure. There wasn't much in Bruce's life Clark didn't know about, and Clark had always had a soft spot for him, helping him get around Bruce when he was younger, easing his way with a nudge here, a conversation with Bruce there. And when he was growing up, Clark had been in and out of the Manor all the time, practically every day; he wouldn't have missed anything, if there was anything to know. Not that he thought Clark would tell him outright, but there were ways and ways. He wasn't the world's greatest boy detective for nothing. 

The secret entrance bookcase slid shut behind him, and he caught a glimpse of his face in the library mirror that was actually a lens monitor. It did in fact look pretty bad. 

"Hurry up, old man, or no soup for you," he said into the mirror with a grin. "And I'm taking all the dessert," he added, plucking an apple from the bowl by the chair and biting into it with a hearty crunch.

* * *

In the cave, Bruce unclipped armor as he went. He walked to a shadowed corner of the wide dark hall, and placed a quick thumb on the scanner, which blinked at him. More solid rock slid aside to reveal a precipitous, winding little stairway carved out of rock. He arrived at the bottom: a warm, dim refuge within the larger refuge, his cave within the cave. There were showers here — multiple heads, water pressure designed to peel the flesh off humans, long benches to sit and soak up the steam. There was a small spartan bedroom down here, too, for those frequent nights he just couldn't make it up to the large suite of rooms upstairs. His wasn't the largest set of rooms, by any means; those rooms were closed, darkened, and Alfred had never once bothered him about moving into the master suite. But even his own bedroom felt overlarge compared to this simple nook. The Manor might be his house, but this was his home. 

"Waynette of the week?" Clark peered over his newspaper. He was stretched in the only comfortable chair, some ridiculous show flickering mutely on one of the monitors behind him. Bruce shrugged out of the body casing.

"The boy has an overactive imagination." He winced as he flexed, assessing. 

"Does he now. Put something on that, or I'll tell Alfred."

"I'm getting to it. You know." He tucked a towel into his waist. "There's no law against turning on the mute button, when a private conversation is running on the audio feed."

Clark flipped to the editorials. "I came through the back tunnels earlier, and you were out. Thought I'd take a nap for a while. Woke up to the sound of this very interesting conversation." He smiled up at Bruce. 

"The mute button is right over there."

"Oh." Clark waved a hand, went back to his paper. "Technology. It's all very confusing." 

"You fly a spaceship."

"Ah, but you hate it when I touch your things." The front page section landed on the floor. "Hey. I thought you did great, for what it's worth. Seriously. I mean, poor Dick, because Barbara is just going to eat him for breakfast, but you were great."

Bruce grimaced. "We'll see. That kid only hears forty percent of what anyone says to him anyway, so who knows."

"You know," Clark said lightly, folding over the crossword and uncapping his pen. "It wouldn't kill you to say some of those things in person. When you knew I was listening, that is."

Bruce picked up the bits of newspaper entrails, frowning at the small untidiness. He opened the door to the shower area, fiddled with the knobs until the hot water setting was somewhere between _temperature of the earth's core_ and _red dwarf star_. Only the top of Clark's head was visible, over the back of the chair. Bruce considered, then leaned over the chair, pulling Clark's left hand to him. He put the hand against his face, felt Clark's fingers curl against his jaw, brushing his faint scratch of stubble. 

"Inscrutable," he whispered into Clark's palm. 

"Hm?"

"Fifteen down. Like an enigma, eleven letters. Inscrutable."

"Oh for—" Clark yanked his hand free. "That is the single most annoying thing you do, now you've ruined the whole thing for me."

Bruce smiled, good humor restored. He let fall the hand and headed for the shower. Steam clouded the little room when he opened the door and stepped inside. He went boneless in the spray. He considered telling Clark he had known he had been listening the whole time, but then, Clark knew that. Clark knew he had seized the opportunity to say words they normally left to the dark, to voiceless whispers. Clark knew the words had been intended for him. 

Did he mean it? Did he mean he wanted the words that the light made impossible to say? Clark hadn't said a word of reproach to him about tonight; hadn't said, _if you hadn't kept us in the fucking closet all these years maybe your boy — screw that, OUR boy — would have some idea how to be a whole person without slicing out his heart._ Had it been foolish of him, to have assumed the boy just knew without being told, all these years? How could he have avoided knowing, how could he not have seen, sensed it? But then, all those layers of secrecy. . . Old arguments swirled in his head. _No one can know. For our protection. For yours. For mine. For theirs_. Clark with his head in his hands. _I'm so tired of this, Bruce, I just can't anymore. You don't mean that. One of these days I will. I'm tired of hiding. Clark. We agreed. Clark._ He tipped his head forward and braced his arms. He'd done such wrong by both of them, by Clark and Dick both. He had thought he was doing his best, but his best had fallen far short. 

He didn't even startle when the broad arms came around him. 

"Dick's waiting for me upstairs," he said. 

"Better make this fast then," and Clark turned him, backed him against the tiles, wrists held effortlessly above his head. Clark looked like he was thinking about something. No—looked like he was reading everything Bruce was thinking, from the inside out. Like his X-ray vision read brainwaves too, and most of the time, where Bruce was concerned, it did. 

Clark put his hand on the left side of Bruce's chest, until they could both feel the steady pound underneath his hand. 

"Heart," he whispered. He put his hand on the side of Bruce's neck, on the vein that throbbed and jumped like a living thing, and where the pulse quickened. "Blood." He stopped. And then Bruce's mouth took his, pulling him in, swallowing his breath. 

"Air," said Bruce.


End file.
